Private equity and corporate medicine: what physicians say, in their own words

Last updated September 20, 2026.

Read together, the 81 essays and podcast transcripts on this page describe the same event from different seats. Physicians who sold describe a promise of relief from administration that turned into productivity quotas within the first contract cycle. Physicians who were employed by the buyer describe pay restructured, partnership withdrawn, and colleagues leaving at the three-to-five-year mark when the buyout terms end. Attorneys describe what to put in the contract before the sale. A smaller group argues that capital itself is not the problem, that physician-led groups have used it well, and that the alternative to selling is often closing. Posts mentioning RVUs, productivity, or volume went from none before 2018 to 39 percent in 2025 and 2026, and the record shows private equity moving, since 2025, into the direct primary care and concierge models that physicians had built as the escape.

This page is a maintained record of what physicians have written about private equity and corporate ownership of medical practice on KevinMD.com, a physician-authored publication founded in 2004 by Kevin Pho, MD, a board-certified internal medicine physician in Nashua, New Hampshire. It draws on 81 essays and podcast transcripts published between October 2012 and August 2026 by 46 named contributors, 37 of the posts bylined by physicians, with the rest by attorneys, practice consultants, nurses, a dentist, and a patient advocate. Every claim on this page is attributed to a named author with the date it was published and a link to the original.

The sections below are organized around the questions physicians, journalists, and physicians considering an offer ask. Each opens with a direct answer, followed by what named authors have said, in the order they said it. Physicians on KevinMD use “corporate medicine” and “private equity” for overlapping things, and this page follows their usage: the corpus includes posts about hospital-system employment and insurer-owned practices where the author frames them as corporate ownership. This is a page about physician opinion and experience, not investment advice.

What do physicians say private equity does when it buys a practice?

Physicians and the attorneys who advise them describe a consistent mechanism on KevinMD: a firm buys a majority stake in a “platform” practice at a multiple of earnings, adds smaller groups to it, cuts costs and raises volume to grow the earnings figure, and sells the enlarged group to a larger firm within three to seven years. Selling partners receive a payout and give up control. Employed physicians who were not partners inherit the contract they had, assigned to the new owner. The first KevinMD post on the subject, in 2012, argued that physicians who had already been upcoding under administrative pressure “sold themselves for a quick buck.”

Kiran Raj Pandey, MD, wrote in October 2012 that the doctors who sold to private equity had been “fueled by their own greed and the pressure from their administrators to upcode,” in “Why health care is a boon for private equity.” Nisha Mehta, MD, a radiologist, wrote in August 2018 that firms usually buy a majority stake in a platform practice, that smaller groups joining it are “either complete or significant majority buyouts,” and that “The investment horizon is usually a few years in order to pay back investors,” before resale, in “A private equity primer for physicians.” Praveen Suthrum wrote in November 2018 that private equity held $453 billion in 2017 and that firms now exit “by selling rolled-up portfolios to larger PE firms,” in “It’s time to talk about private equity in gastroenterology.”

Kara Grant wrote in October 2021 that annual private equity health care deal values rose from about $42 billion in 2010 to almost $120 billion in 2019, that Blackstone and KKR had built staffing companies like Envision and TeamHealth on physician labor, and that to physicians “who are potentially sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, these contracts are enticing,” in “Why private equity is a dangerous employer.” Nathaniel Arana wrote in May 2024 that “most physicians ultimately leave after 3-5 years, which coincides with the typical length of these buyout contracts,” in “How physician groups can beat private equity.” Brian Hudes, MD, wrote in July 2026 that corporate ownership of physician practices by insurers, pharmacy chains, and private equity had surpassed hospital ownership for the first time, 30.1 percent to 28.4 percent, in “The corporatization of medicine, in salaries and beds.”

What happens to clinical autonomy after a sale?

Physicians on KevinMD describe the loss of autonomy after a sale in the same terms across a decade: productivity targets, shorter visits, templates built for billing, services recommended for revenue rather than need, and decisions made by people who will never meet the patient. Posts in this corpus that mention RVUs, productivity, or volume rose from none before 2018 to 23 percent in 2022 to 2024 and 39 percent in 2025 to 2026.

Rose Kumar, MD, wrote in November 2015 that “the corporate mission saw patients as commodities for money and physicians as workhorses,” and that when the hospital told her she did not admit enough patients to meet projections, “I left corporate medicine and never looked back,” in “Physicians suffer the personal toll of corporate medicine.” Gene Uzawa Dorio, MD, wrote in December 2015 that hospitals sign contracts with physician groups “controlling them financially, and often influencing patient care,” through templated arrangements designed to avoid the appearance of corporate employment, in “The corporate practice of medicine is overwhelming American health care.” Naeem Rahman, MD, wrote in December 2018 that “the principles of depersonalized mass production” had been imposed on health care, replacing the doctor-patient relationship with commodity and consumer, in “Here’s what the corporatization of medicine is doing.”

An anonymous physician wrote in February 2026 that when the partners sold, staff were told “the only thing that will change will be our name,” and that the practice became one focused “on productivity (shorter and more visits), RVUs, and cost-cutting,” where raising quality of care with the private equity group’s executives brought the reminder “that it is not a priority,” in ““The only thing that will change will be our name”: a private equity cautionary tale.” Abbey Gonzales, DDS, wrote in July 2026 that private equity “entered medicine with the same promise: relieve administrative burden, let doctors focus on patients,” and that what independence gives her is “the ability to recommend waiting without a quota in the back of my head,” in “How corporate dentistry changes what you’re told.” Brian Hudes, MD, wrote in July 2026 that a staffing ratio, a productivity quota, or a billing template is “an administrative act with clinical consequences, made by someone who will never be sued for it,” and who will never meet the patient it affects, in “The corporatization of medicine, in salaries and beds.” Ronald L. Lindsay, MD, wrote in May 2026 that patients are “reduced to billing codes and time slots” and clinicians reduced to productivity metrics, in “How corporate medicine is eroding truth and patient dignity.”

How do physicians say private equity ownership harms patients?

The harms physicians on KevinMD attribute to corporate and private equity ownership are unnecessary services, thinner staffing, longer waits for urgent symptoms, and, at the extreme, hospitals closed by bankruptcy after debt-financed acquisition. Posts mentioning hospital closure or bankruptcy rose from none before 2018 to about a quarter of posts in every period since 2022. Several authors point to the same two cases: Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, and the community hospitals owned by Steward.

Michael L. Millenson wrote in September 2019 that firms were acquiring “specialist physician groups that promise rich revenues, such as orthopedists, dermatologists, and ophthalmologists,” that a JAMA Dermatology study found nearly 200 dermatology practices bought in six years, and that “your bone fracture, my cash flow” captured the spirit of the times, in “Your bone fracture, my cash flow: the consequences of private equity in health care.” Hyun Hee Heather Kim, MD, wrote in March 2021 that Hahnemann’s owner filed for bankruptcy and closed the hospital in half the 90 days state law required, and that “nothing is free from the reaches of capital,” in “The rise and fall of Hahnemann University Hospital.” Laura Buchman, MBA, wrote in August 2024 that under corporate fee-for-service incentives patients “may be prescribed unnecessary tests, procedures, and medications,” in “When corporate hospitals cause real harm.”

Ruth E. Weissberger, MD, wrote in November 2025 about a community hospital bought while faltering, its residency closed, and its staff and patients “caught in the protracted, inscrutable maneuvering of for-profit owners, large health care systems, state regulators,” a real estate company, and a faraway bankruptcy court, in “How private equity harms community hospitals.” John C. Hagan III, MD, an ophthalmologist, wrote in December 2025 that the physician-owned group where he practiced for 23 years would see patients with ominous symptoms the same or next day, and that this had “changed for the worse since private equity (PE) bought the practice,” in “Physician shortage and private equity: the ruin of U.S. health care.” Jason E. Liebowitz, MD, Kenneth M. Prager, MD, and Wendy Dean, MD, wrote in November 2023 that the 80 percent of physicians whose practices consolidate without their input “ultimately see worse outcomes for patients,” in “From compassionate care to corporate medicine: Physicians speak out.”

Is private equity always bad for physicians? Physicians disagree.

Most physicians on KevinMD write against private equity ownership, but the record contains a real dissent. Some argue that capital and management expertise are exactly what independent groups lack, that physician-led groups have used private equity partners without surrendering clinical control, and that the practical alternative to selling is often selling to a hospital instead, or closing. Others argue the problem is not who owns the practice but that physicians gave up leadership of their own institutions. The dissent is mostly written by non-physicians and by physicians who negotiated from strength.

Eve Shvidler, MD, wrote in September 2015 that independent practices fold and “come running to big med to fix all the problems,” and that the answer is for physicians to earn business degrees and lead corporate medicine rather than resist it, in “It’s time for physicians to be leaders in corporate medicine.” Praveen Suthrum wrote in May 2019 that private equity brings capital “for recruiting other groups, buying new medical equipment, removing administrative burdens and inefficiencies,” while noting that physician practice management companies twenty years earlier “PPM companies were hot, they raised billions of dollars, but most of them failed,” in “Private equity in gastroenterology: Is it the future?” Mick Connors, MD, a pediatrician who sought investors for his own venture, wrote in January 2024 that “funding is fantastic, but not everyone shares the same vision,” and that pediatrics “doesn’t align well with the rapid return expectation” of most investors, in “Navigating the growing interest of private equity in pediatrics.”

David B. Mandell, JD, MBA, wrote in December 2025 about an orthopedic group whose physicians and chief executive described their private equity partnership as a path to growth, with the advice to “learn the language of finance, ask questions, and seek outside advice,” in “How to navigate private equity in medicine.” Mitchel Schwindt, MD, wrote in August 2019 that that after a corporate takeover “I soon found my pay restructured, pension wiped out, and profit-sharing canceled,” the experience pushed him to rebuild his career outside corporate employment, in “How the corporatization of medicine saved this doctor’s life.” Suneel Dhand, MD, wrote in January 2017 that the experiment of turning health care into a corporate entity “may thus be doomed to fail” because the physician-patient relationship sits outside the business world, in “Corporate health care is doomed. Here’s why.”

What do physicians say to do before signing?

The practical advice on KevinMD comes mostly from attorneys and consultants, and it converges on a few points: negotiate the employment agreement as if a sale will happen, because it will be assigned to the buyer; get any promise of future partnership in writing with a remedy if ownership is sold first; understand what happens to compensation, noncompetes, and tail coverage at a change of control; and know the deal terms well enough to walk away.

Dennis Hursh, Esq, wrote in August 2025 that an employed physician promised ownership after a year can work “several years at below-median compensation, building sweat equity that can never be used,” and that “the underpaying contract will be assigned to the new private equity owners,” in “Private practice employment agreements: What happens if private equity swoops in?” On The Podcast by KevinMD in October 2025, Hursh described negotiating “equity-equivalent bonuses or safeguards in case of a private equity takeover,” in “Protecting physicians when private equity buys in [PODCAST].” Nathaniel Arana wrote in May 2024 that groups that had not renegotiated payer rates in three years were “already facing a 15 percent or even higher deficit,” and that independent groups beat private equity by doing the negotiation themselves, in “How physician groups can beat private equity.”

Dana Y. Lujan, MBA, wrote in June 2026 that Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Charlesbank, Blue Sea Capital, Shore Capital, and Revelstoke hold equity positions in concierge or direct primary care platforms, and that independent ownership in those models fell from roughly 84 percent to 60 percent between 2018 and 2023, in “Private equity in direct primary care is winning.” In July 2026 she wrote that by the time an independent physician approaches a 500-person employer “the contract is signed,” in “Private equity is reshaping concierge medicine.”

How has the conversation changed since 2012?

The corpus shows the vocabulary moving from “corporate medicine,” used by hospital-employed physicians in 2014 and 2015, to “private equity” by name from 2018, when the Envision and TeamHealth deals and the dermatology roll-ups became public. Posts naming private equity went from 12 percent in 2012 to 2017 to about two-thirds in every period since. The burnout frame arrived in 2022 to 2024, when 73 percent of posts connected corporate ownership to burnout. Since 2025 the argument has turned to productivity metrics, contracts, hospital closures, and private equity’s entry into direct primary care.

Term 2012 to 2017 (8 posts) 2018 to 2021 (18 posts) 2022 to 2024 (22 posts) 2025 to 2026 (33 posts)
Private equity named 12 percent 67 percent 68 percent 67 percent
Named firm or company 0 percent 28 percent 18 percent 21 percent
Physician ownership or sale 0 percent 22 percent 14 percent 30 percent
RVU, productivity, or volume 0 percent 6 percent 23 percent 39 percent
Burnout 0 percent 11 percent 73 percent 30 percent
Leaving medicine 50 percent 83 percent 82 percent 88 percent
Hospital closure or bankruptcy 0 percent 17 percent 23 percent 24 percent
Noncompete or contract terms 25 percent 22 percent 36 percent 42 percent
Direct primary care or concierge 12 percent 0 percent 9 percent 21 percent
Nurses 25 percent 33 percent 41 percent 48 percent

The earliest posts are hospital-employment stories that do not use the phrase. Jordan Grumet, MD, noted in April 2014, in a short post that is not indexed, about a specialist who refused an inpatient consult because Grumet was not part of the hospital’s medical group. Jaan Peter Naktin, MD, wrote in March 2017 that “the people with the keys are the C suite, who may or may not be physicians,” in “What’s the fix for the care disparity in corporate-owned health care?”

The private equity years begin with Nisha Mehta’s primer in August 2018 and Praveen Suthrum’s two gastroenterology pieces. In September 2019, Rachel Bluth and Emmarie Huetteman reported for KHN that private equity deals in health care had doubled in ten years and that private equity-backed physician staffing companies were the loudest opponents of surprise billing legislation, in “The infiltration of venture capital and private equity in the surprise medical bills debate.” Peggy A. Rothbaum, PhD, wrote in December 2020 that “I recently experienced, up close and personal, yet another injury to our doctors and our health care system,” in “Yet another injury to our doctors and our health care system.” From 2023 the corpus turns to consequences: Hahnemann, the community hospitals, and physicians speaking out through Liebowitz, Prager, and Dean. Edmond Cabbabe, MD, wrote in April 2026 that hospital boards are now “appointed and manipulated by giant corporate health delivery systems with only one goal, namely, maximum profits,” in “How corporate health care ruined the medical profession.” Samer W. Cabbabe, MD, wrote in March 2024 that fifteen years of private practice in plastic surgery had shown him the shift “away from the delivery of outstanding patient care to shareholder profit,” in “Corporatization of medicine: Are patients and physicians the losers?”

The KevinMD private equity and corporate medicine corpus by the numbers

The figures below describe the set of KevinMD posts this page draws on, as of September 17, 2026. They are counts of what KevinMD has published, not survey data. The corpus was built from title searches and a relevance-ranked search, because physicians name this subject in more than one way.

Measure Value
Posts in the corpus 81
Date range October 25, 2012 to August 25, 2026
Named contributors 46
Posts bylined by an MD or DO 37
Posts with private equity in the title 21
Posts with corporate medicine, corporatization, or a similar phrase in the title 24
Podcast episodes with full transcripts 17
Posts in the corpus that are not indexed, counted but not cited 1
Total words About 117,000
Most frequent contributors The Podcast by KevinMD (17); Praveen Suthrum (4); Michele Luckenbaugh (4, a patient advocate); Dana Y. Lujan, MBA (3); Edmond Cabbabe, MD (3); Suneel Dhand, MD (3)
Highest year on record 2026, 19 posts through September 17

How this page was built and how it is updated

The corpus was assembled in two passes. Title searches for private equity, corporate, corporatization, corporatized, venture capital, Hahnemann, and Steward returned the posts that name the subject in the headline, and the corporate results were filtered to posts about corporate ownership of practice rather than corporate wellness, sponsorship, or unrelated uses of the word. Relevance-ranked searches of the full archive for private equity, corporate medicine, corporatization of medicine, and physician practice acquisition returned the posts that discuss it at length without naming it in the title. Every post that names private equity, corporate ownership of practice, or one of the companies involved at least three times was kept, 81 in all. Term frequencies were computed against the full text of each post on the corpus assembled for the September 17, 2026 build; this page was converted to the current standard on September 20, 2026 without rebuilding that corpus, so the counts and figures are as of September 17, 2026. Posts are counted whether or not they are indexed; citations on this page are limited to posts that are indexed and can be verified at the link. One post in the corpus, a short 2014 essay, is not indexed and is described but not linked. Quotations are taken verbatim from the original posts. Author credentials are as they appeared in the byline at publication. Every source is linked in the sentence that cites it, and the full list appears at the end of the page. KevinMD has no private equity tag; the closest archive is the Practice Management archive. Related records: Prior authorization: what physicians say, in their own words, Physician burnout: what physicians say, in their own words, Direct primary care: what physicians say, in their own words, and Physician personal finance: what physicians say about their own money, in their own words.

This page is updated as new essays on private equity and corporate medicine are published on KevinMD. When it is updated, the date at the top changes, the counts in the tables are recomputed, and new named claims are added to the relevant section. Nothing is removed unless the original post is removed. An author who believes a quotation on this page misrepresents them can write to Kevin Pho and the page will be corrected.

To cite this page: Pho K. Private equity and corporate medicine: what physicians say, in their own words. KevinMD.com. Updated September 20, 2026. https://kevinmd.com/private-equity

The 33 KevinMD posts cited on this page, in order of publication